Warp 9.6 ?

[Timo]

I'd rather like to think that even the TNG era warp physicists don't really understand the warp curve beyond the low nines. There could be enough "natural variation" there that all sorts of curves are possible - and by the time of TNG "All Good Things", it will actually be found that there are more of those fancy power minima there when you go up high enough, enabling Warp 13 and the like.

The same might have held true back in TOS: people didn't understand high warp, because "natural noise" hid the power minima, and they came up with a rough approximation for the lower warp factors but completely goofed up with the higher ones. They wouldn't have had much experimental data on those anyway, what with the skippers and machinists of the best and fastest ships contractually afraid of going past warp seven as late as TOS "Arena"...

The curve in the TNG Tech Manual might approximate "reality", or then not. By the "time of writing" of that book, the Galaxy ships seem the fastest in the Starfleet arsenal, and those apparently have not spent much time at speeds past warp 9.2.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Timo said:
Also, nowhere in ST:FC does it say that the trip from the RNZ to Earth took three hours. All we know is that, once Picard decides to go to Earth after all, he does so seemingly in one stretch during which the same people are seen at the bridge stations at both ends of the trip. Could be anything between, say, two minutes and two days.

I don't think that was the case.
Once Picard found out the Federation was under attack by the Borg, they had a meeting, and Data mentions in that meeting that at maximum warp it would take them 3 hours and something to reach the Borg ... which were not at Earth at that point in the movie, but somewhere near the Typhoon expanse if my memory serves.
Anyway, just a bit later, the Borg are at Earth and the Enterprise jumps to maximum Warp that takes them to Earth very soon.
Presumably only a few hours away from the main battle like it was suggested earlier.

To get from the RNZ to the Typhoon expanse in just over 3 hours at Voyagers Maximum warp (which is factors above the Sovereign class to my knowledge) would probably take well over a week.

 

[shipfisher]

Timo said:
I'd rather like to think that even the TNG era warp physicists don't really understand the warp curve beyond the low nines. There could be enough "natural variation" there that all sorts of curves are possible - and by the time of TNG "All Good Things", it will actually be found that there are more of those fancy power minima there when you go up high enough, enabling Warp 13 and the like.

The same might have held true back in TOS: people didn't understand high warp, because "natural noise" hid the power minima, and they came up with a rough approximation for the lower warp factors but completely goofed up with the higher ones. They wouldn't have had much experimental data on those anyway, what with the skippers and machinists of the best and fastest ships contractually afraid of going past warp seven as late as TOS "Arena"...

The curve in the TNG Tech Manual might approximate "reality", or then not. By the "time of writing" of that book, the Galaxy ships seem the fastest in the Starfleet arsenal, and those apparently have not spent much time at speeds past warp 9.2.

That makes a lot of sense as usual Timo. I always thought that somewhere in the TMP era somebody finally got a ship "officially" up to what should have been warp 10 and the engineers monitoring the engine power usage curves started wondering where the integer warp factor power minima went. In saying this, I'll admit to being in the warp factor exponent was always 10/3 camp and that the warp scale recalibration was all above warp 9.

My take on the warp 13 reference in TNG:All Good Things was either a verbal shorthand for warp 9.99999... or reference to a slipstream factor, these starting at 10 to avoid overlap with requests for "regular" warp speeds - either seems likely 25 years down the track from 2370 or so.

 

[Timo]

I don't think that was the case.
Once Picard found out the Federation was under attack by the Borg, they had a meeting, and Data mentions in that meeting that at maximum warp it would take them 3 hours and something to reach the Borg ... which were not at Earth at that point in the movie, but somewhere near the Typhoon expanse if my memory serves.

Indeed.

Anyway, just a bit later, the Borg are at Earth

Nope - just a bit later (while Picard sulks in his Ready Room, listening to Bizet, and Riker tries to offer a comforting shoulder), the Borg are at Typhon, the place where Picard wanted to join the fleet. Picard then hears how the Borg plunge through that fleet and continue on course to Earth.

We don't hear how long the Borg are expected to take on their flight from Typhon to Earth. Nor do we hear how long this will take the E-E. But since both the fleet, the Borg and the E-E will start that journey from within three hours of each other, it really doesn't matter. They will all take roughly as long by default.

and the Enterprise jumps to maximum Warp that takes them to Earth very soon.

No real way to tell whether it is "very soon" or "after an agonizingly long wait".

All we can really tell is that (at least one part of) the RNZ is close to the Typhon Sector - three-plus hours apart at maximum E-E warp. How far both of those are from Earth is a matter of conjecture. Did the fleet fight a running battle for two minutes or two weeks? Personally, I'd perhaps go for a day or so.

It's a bit curious how Picard doesn't seem to get regular updates on the battle before arriving at Earth, or talk with Admiral Hayes or anything. But since his presence in the battle is supposed to be unauthorized, I'll take his comm silence as a sign of secretiveness rather than as a sign of a really short trip.

If he did talk with Hayes, the Admiral might order the Enterprise to be fired upon, really. Starfleet already has its hands full fighting one Borg ship. To have another ship commanded by a Borg join the fray...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

I think the battle was waged over several hours if anything.

In any case, I think that we have a good clue that the Typhon sector is a decent distance away from Earth.
I think it was referenced on several occasions in TNG and some remarks were stated indicating it was a long way from the core of Federation space.

Either way ... the Romulans may be close to Earth, but not hours away.
Heck the Klingons home world is only about 4 days away at Warp 5 (NX-01 speed) and that was stated to have been way too short of a distance by the writers.

The RNZ is referenced on TNG if I'm not mistaken when the D was investigating an attack on their outposts, and Picard mentions it would take at least a week (perhaps days) for the frozen humans who were revived in the episode to reach Earth.

In any case, we know the ship traveled at the speed of plot towards Earth ... so it's a moot point.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

It was going to take 3 hours + for the Enterprise to reach the Typhon Sector from where they were when Admiral Hayes contacted Picard (we dont know where the Enterprise was), when The Federation fleet engaged the Borg in the Typhon Sector the Enterprise was now at this time patroling the Neutral Zone. Picard set a course for Earth whilst the Borg was still fighting the Federation fleet in the Typhon sector, Picard knew the Cube would reach Earth and was trying to intercept it as soon as possible.
Now we dont know how long it took the Borg cube to get from the Typhon sector to Earth, keep in mind theres not only the distance from the Typhon sector to Earth to factor in but the fact that the borg was constantly under attack by Federation ships all the way slowing it down, it could have taken anything from 3 hours to 5+ hours for the Borg to reach Earth so theres no way whatsoever of knowing how long it took the Enterprise to get from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth.

IMHO if theres a future Trek Series set after the 24th century the ships of the new series should have Transwarp capability and it should be stated 'on screen' what the different speeds are of this new Transwarp and the writers should stick with it.

 

[Timo]

Well, the background nebula was the same both when Picard spoke with Hayes / told his staff they weren't going, and when the ship finally jumped to warp for Earth. So it's highly likely that the location was the exact same, and the ship had at most puttered about at impulse between those two scenes.

True that the speed of the Borg is unknown - but it's a given that the fleet was slowing it down a bit, because an unharassed Cube in "BoBW" was giving the top-of-the-line E-D a good chase. The older Excelsiors, Mirandas and whatnots in the Typhon fleet shouldn't have been able to keep up if the Borg proceeded at "BoBW" speed. Never mind the poor Defiant, which can only do warp nine on a good day and by taking the weapons offline.

As for whether Picard would head for the quickest intercept point (which might be somewhere between Typhon and Earth) or deliberately for Earth (even at the risk of being there before the Borg, and thereby wasting several good hours during which he could have been firing phasers at the Cube)... That's another thing we can't really tell from the onscreen evidence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Delta1]

Deks said:
Either way ... the Romulans may be close to Earth, but not hours away.

But we're not interested in how far the Romulans are from Earth. We're interested in how far a starship patrolling the RNZ is from Earth. A starship under the command of someone who doesn't really want to be doing his job, but wants to be either in the Typhon sector or Solar system.

Such a patrol need not crawl along the boundary of the Neutral Zone. It's probably performed from a stand-off distance, from which a large number of Romulan stars can be observed without being too conspicuous. And such a commander would probably position his ship where he could move it quickly to where he really wanted to be.

The RNZ is referenced on TNG if I'm not mistaken when the D was investigating an attack on their outposts, and Picard mentions it would take at least a week (perhaps days) for the frozen humans who were revived in the episode to reach Earth.

The Neutral Zone isn't a point, it's a big thick sheet in space. One point on the RNZ might be hundreds of light-years from Earth, another might rub up against it (astronomically speaking).

Anyhow, Picard ordered his officers to set a course for the Neutral Zone, but he never said the magic E-word, so he might never have gotten there.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Delta1 said:
Anyhow, Picard ordered his officers to set a course for the Neutral Zone, but he never said the magic E-word, so he might never have gotten there.

Seeing as Riker came in with the report of the first sensor sweep of the Neutral Zone and Ship was shown to be travelling at Impulse I kinda think the Enterprise got there.

 

[Delta1]

We regularly perform "sensor sweeps" of other galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope. Does that mean the HST is in other galaxies?

 

[USS KG5]

Timo said:
The older Excelsiors, Mirandas and whatnots in the Typhon fleet shouldn't have been able to keep up if the Borg proceeded at "BoBW" speed. Never mind the poor Defiant, which can only do warp nine on a good day and by taking the weapons offline.

I imagine the Feds did not continuously attack the cube anyhow but hit in waves of increasing intensity as they got closer to Earth, culminating in the huge battle we see at Earth when things are getting more desperate.

Ironically we do not see any Mirandas or Excelsiors, so they are either all off getting re-fitted to ruck with the Dominion or were left behind by the rest of the fleet as they warped off after the cube.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Delta1 said:
We regularly perform "sensor sweeps" of other galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope. Does that mean the HST is in other galaxies?

Sorry dude but magnifying light using a telescope and performing a 24th century sensor sweep of a vast area of space attempting to locate any possible cloaked ships is a whole different ball park, If you're going to find a cloaked ship you're going to have to be looking for the tiniest of tetryon emmisions and to do that you need to be as close as possible. If Picard says set a course for the Neutral Zone then hes going to the neutral zone, otherwise he would have said bring us within such and such a distance of the Neutral zone. Lets be real about this.

 

[Timo]

Ironically we do not see any Mirandas or Excelsiors, so they are either all off getting re-fitted to ruck with the Dominion or were left behind by the rest of the fleet as they warped off after the cube.

Actually, there is at least one Miranda very prominently shown when Picard joins the fray near Earth. But arguably she could be one of the local defenders of Earth, while all the older vessels that started out at Typhon have already fallen behind.

Still, the Cube should be able to outrun the slowish Defiant unless Starfleet was somehow able to cut its speed down from the warp 9.6 suggested in "BoBW". Or unless the Borg deliberately moved slowly for some reason (perhaps not all their Cubes are equal?).

If you're going to find a cloaked ship you're going to have to be looking for the tiniest of tetryon emmisions and to do that you need to be as close as possible.

To be sure, we never learned that Picard would be looking for cloaked vessels. Indeed, to do so at the Neutral Zone might border on a violation of the treaty. Instead, we saw him charting comets and space dust...

But there's a distinct lack of "engage at warp" commands prior to the one where Picard orders the ship to Earth. Writer intention seems to be that the ship was more or less in the same place until that moment, as supported by the nebula visuals.

(Admittedly, the "set course for the NZ" command muddles this up a little... But not much. Even if you are already patrolling the US/Russian border at the Aleuts, it would be meaningful to say "set course for the border" as opposed to "set course away from the border", in order to micromanage the movements of the ship near that border. )

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Timo said:
To be sure, we never learned that Picard would be looking for cloaked vessels. Indeed, to do so at the Neutral Zone might border on a violation of the treaty. Instead, we saw him charting comets and space dust...

His orders were to patrol the Neutral Zone in case the Romulans took advantage of the situation, if they're going to take advantage they wouldn't send uncloaked ships across the NZ they'd send cloaked ships, so I'm sure scanning for cloaked ships would be at the top of the list, obviously they'd be scanning everything even the space dust but looking out for Tetryon emissions or quantum singularities would also be on the cards.

Timo said:

Still, the Cube should be able to outrun the slowish Defiant unless Starfleet was somehow able to cut its speed down from the warp 9.6 suggested in "BoBW". Or unless the Borg deliberately moved slowly for some reason (perhaps not all their Cubes are equal?).

I would imagine the Cube was heavily damaged and was expending more power on regenerating rather than warp so the Cube might have been travelling at a lower warp.